iOS (iPad) Printing - what's the best way?

[maniac]

Hello all,

 

We have 450 iPads, but no printing solution for them. Thus far we have encouraged electronic sharing and sending of work via Dropbox/email/Webdav, but we are now being pushed to supply some form of printing ability from these devices as apparently it's needed.

 

So I've been looking about. I've not been doing any evaluating yet, but a few options spring out at me.

 

1) We have papercut for our printer/copier management and I know there's an app which works with this for printing, so how effective is that and how does it work? does anyone has experience of it?

 

2) I've some across Printopia which allows sharing of printers via an apple mac using the Air Print system Printopia - AirPrint to Any Printer - Print from iPad - Print from iPhone - Ecamm Network we have plenty of macs in the building that could act as hosts for this for each department, so has anyone used that and how well does it work?

 

3) I've found this iPad Printing and iPhone Printing with EFI Fiery direct mobile printing and our Ricoh MFP printers are supported - as we have one of these per department it would be suitable. Has anyone used it and is so, how well does that work?

 

Any other suggestions, has anyone successfully rolled out printing on a large scale like this and managed to retain at least some sort of control over it?

 

Cheers for your help!

 

Mike.

[MatthewL]

Have a look a this, not used it myself but my colleague has looked into it.

[jmak]

I have seen Fingerprint working and heard good feedback.

[awais]

u need your printers to be networked and then connect them to your ipads through a program called airprint or airserver and then you can print and make sure u connect ur ipads to all the printers which are networked..hope that helps

[Marci]

(Except the general Airprint protocol iirc doesn't support accounting...)

 

We use Konica Minolta's Email-to-Print service... which allows the correct cost centers to be billed according to the user. Altho KM didn't get it up and running properly so we're still trying to iron out the issues.

[caffrey]

I kind've got it working on a raspberry pi with avahi and cups , it was a bonus as printing isn't a priority. There's also the possibility of using google print but not looked into that much.

[iom100]

I have seen Fingerprint working and heard good feedback.

 

We're using FingerPrint on our Windows print server. It's cheap and it works well. You do need to have a print server on the same subnet as your iOS devices though.

[nyiss]

Depending what printers you have, we use an app called HP ePrint on our ipads. It can be a bit flaky at times but the staff and children find it quite user friendly.

[WithoutMotive]

Our staff use their iPads as terminal clients when they want to print documents.

In Printing Preferences we define the printers to be assigned to any client which includes the word "iPad" in it's name.

Seems to work well.

[Squip]

This is supposed to be pretty good - xPrintServer - an iOS Print Server for iPhone and iPad Printing

 

It literally just has a ethernet and power socket irrc. Just plug it in somewhere and bobs your uncle

[timjcraig]

If you already have PaperCut installed just update to latest version and install FingerPrint on PaperCut server if on same subnet as iPads or install PaperCut secondary server with FingerPrint on same subnet. Once PaperCut app installed on iPads you can account for prints and use shared account selection.

 

PaperCut KB

 

http://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/FingerPrintIOSPrinting

[MatthewL]

I am yet to try FingerPrintIOS via PaperCut its on my list of things to try in the office this week.

 

I have done an install of EveryonePrint today, omg, this is one of the most easiest ways to get iPads printing via a Windows server if you just want to be able to print and not fussed about tracking and authentication, ideal for a primary school exactly where I did it today.

 

You run the installer, install the mobile gateway and configure it, tell it which printer you want to publish as such as an air printer, install the app on the iPad and it discovers them providing you have multicast enabled on your WiFI, the one in question today was a Meru one. Few other steps needed in the software around authentication but we did it on a 2003 server with a Sharp MFD.

 

Took a little longer due to tracking the problem down with why it wasn't been discovered on the iPad but soon sorted.

 

Tried it again tonight at home as your get a 60 day trial and my home printer and away you go.

 

Any questions fire away as I am in the office on Thursday and plan to do more testing if my boss brings his iPad in so we can play with it a bit more.

[kamao]

Just wanted to give another vote for FingerPrint, works flawlessly between our 2008R2 print servers/Konica MFDs in Primary Schools.

[Tricky_Dicky]

We use a secondary Papercut server running on a mac and it works really well. Also means the class printing can be held and released when the teacher wants it.

[Tarul]

Hi,

 

You might want to have a look at Drivve Print - Drivve :: Products They have a mobile print product that connects to PaperCut. It's more suited to larger deployments such as yours. Kingston University uses it along with PaperCut for all their students, so it is capable of handling thousands of users.

[nadeem]

We've gone with Everyoneprint to provide wireless/email printing (done the 60day trial, just bought a license - integrates nicely into our Equitrac system)

[Tarul]

Never Mind...

 

Drivve Print also integrates with equitrac, allowing submission from Mobile Apps (Allowing PullPrint Feature to hold jobs until ready to release ), IPP Printing from IOS devices, WebUpload, Email Submission and supporting over 500 formats without having to have the application installed and much more.

[LaLaLadee]

some developers created a bespoke solution for us and we use their app print n share

[KTECH]

I've seen Fingerprint used before and it worked quite well, i've tried to use it for a recent installation i've done and it seems to of been replaced by "Presto" instead which requires a monthly subscription, i'm sure Fingerprint was just a one off fee and that was it (the subscription isn't expensive but more than the one off would be). Can anyone suggest a cheap/free printing solution similar to Fingerprint or do they all seem to be subscriptions now? thanks.